Sunday, April 30, 2006

Last night, I started a thread in the Discuss section of the Swedish site The Local; the thread was called “The Danger of Censorship about Islam”. A poster named Cyberfluff was a bit exasperated at my writings about the dangers of Islamic immigration and asked what I wanted HER to do. I told her I’d be back; and I was, with a multiparagraph essay that seems to have resulted in my being banned from the site. (Note the name of the thread I started!)

Could someone (a) see if the thread and my response is still there; and if not (b) find Cyberfluff (who posts here and there on that site) and ask her to see my response below. Gates of Vienna is a new kind of Radio Free Europe. Thanks.

I went to the thread at The Local mentioned by FluffResponse, and his or her response is indeed still there, but the reader has to click the link and go to page two to see it.

However, to save readers the trouble of doing the extra clicking, FluffResponse’s message is reproduced here in its entirety (being an old fuddy-duddy, I took the liberty of capitalizing certain proper nouns and the personal pronoun):

In response to your request, here are the four things that I want you to do:

(a) Read the anti-jihadi works: the web sites listed earlier (to which you can add Wolfgang Bruno) and an increasing number of books (authors include Spencer, Bawer, Bostom, Bat Ye'or, Fallaci, Ibn Warraq, Trifkovic, and Karsh).

(b) Rediscover what is being lost (and which Islam is threatening to replace, to our detriment). C.S. Lewis and a local church might re-introduce you to Christianity, for example, and with it a desire to take the radical step that native Europeans are not doing: having children and raising them in a stable family, which implies caring about what is happening to your society today and what is likely to happen in future generations.

(c) Find a way to contribute to the anti-jihadi movement. I gather that some of the books that speak to the European experience (from Bawer, Bat Ye’or, and Fallaci) are not always available in Europe, either because they have not been translated or because… well, in Italy, they want to ARREST Fallaci! it would be good if you could militate against those kind of restrictions and help get the word out, perhaps as a translator, perhaps as a columnist; whatever your skills, help the cause of the West.

(d) Support a political party that stands up to Islam. Fjordman (whose writings are here and here) tells a story of horror for Sweden, a country of increasing rape and robbery. (Why do you shrug off the worsening situation for women, as caused by young immigrant males who consider themselves — in keeping with the model for Muslim behavior — to be waging a war?) Fjordman suggests that there is no political party in Sweden that is worthy of support — in France, there is Mouvement Pour La France, for example — but maybe you can help force a debate about immigration. (Alas, you are already in a situation where fulfilling that request will put you in physical danger; but of course, the continued immigration and acceptance of Islam as an equal of Christianity will only make the horror worse.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In closing, let me report to you how Fjordman sees it:

“Sweden is a semi-totalitarian country. It’s all about façade. On the surface, Sweden is a tolerant nation and peaceful democracy. In reality, there is massive media censorship by a closed elite that is scared of having a debate about immigration. There are even physical attacks on critics of immigration by Leftist extremists, something which has been largely ignored and thus quietly approved by the establishment, until it now even targets parties in Parliament. No dissent is tolerated. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations in immigration. Yet not one party represented in the Swedish Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society or the current immigration policies. The Swedish elite congratulate themselves that they have managed to keep ‘xenophobic’ parties from gaining a foothold while the country is sinking underneath their feet. No, Mr. Jagland, we have nothing to learn from Sweden except hypocrisy to perfection. We should study them only in trying to avoid letting them drag us down with them when they fall, which they will.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

[Another poster (Mahmood) then asked why the Europeans don’t take action; and I answered as follows.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mahmood, that’s a good question. Let me quote from Fjordman again:

“It’s getting urgent. When enough people feel that the system isn’t working anymore and that the social contract has been breached, the entire fabric of the democratic society could unravel. What happens when the welfare state system breaks down, and there is no longer enough money to “grease” the increasing tensions between immigrants and native Europeans? And what happens when people discover that their own leaders, through the EU networks and the Euro-Arab Dialogue described by Bat Ye’or in her book “Eurabia,” have been encouraging all these Muslims to settle here in the first place? There will be massive unemployment, and tens of millions of people will feel angry, scared and humiliated, betrayed by the system, by society and by their own democratic leaders. This is a situation in some ways similar to the Great Depression that led to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Is this where we’re heading once again, with fear, rising Fascism and political assassinations? The difference is that the “Jewish threat” in the 1930s was entirely fictional, whereas the “Islamic threat” now is very real. However, precisely the trauma caused by the events 70 years ago is clouding our judgment this time, since any talk at all about the threat posed by Muslim immigration or about preserving our own culture is being dismissed as “just like the rhetoric used against Jews by the Nazis.” Europeans have been taught to be so scared of our own shadow that we are incapable of seeing that darkness can come from the outside, too. Maybe Europe will burn again, in part as a belated reaction to the horrors of Auschwitz.”

Saturday, April 29, 2006

The Swedish government and moderate Muslims on Friday sharply rejected demands by an Islamic leader to enact special laws for Muslims living in the Scandinavian country.

Mahmoud Aldebe, head of Sweden’s largest Islamic organization, SMF, said Muslims should be given time off work for Friday prayers and Islamic holidays and that imams should approve all divorces between Muslim couples.

His proposals, presented in a letter Thursday to Sweden’s parliamentary parties, were rejected as “completely unacceptable” by Sweden’s Integration Minister Jens Orback.

They also elicited a flood of criticism from moderate Muslims who said they were content with living under Swedish laws.

MKSheppard posted a translation of the Swedish Muslims’ demands in their entirety on the AR15 forum. It includes the cover letter, which compares favorably with LN’s earlier translation. I have posted the entire document here. It bears close and careful scrutiny.

However, here are some choice excerpts which Dymphna has selected.

The problems that exist in regards to the Swedish religious freedom is that it is a Pietistic coloured understanding of individualised religion, that lie behind the Swedish laws regarding religious freedom, whereas for the Muslim minority it is the collective expressions of the religion that are central.

Mahmoud Aldebe, the author of these demands for Muslims, exposes here his own cultural blindness. Muslim collective religious thought does not trump individual religious expression. Sorry, Mahmoud, you can’t argue against the Enlightenment.

The Muslim minority criticises this narrow definition of religion that is the basis of the Swedish laws regarding religious freedom… we can request corrections of the Swedish family law to adapt it to Islam. It is this law that is the most important to Swedish Muslims: marriage, divorce, child protection, and raising underage children.

So far, Muslims have a great record on raising children, given the aggression of young Muslim males against Swedish women. It is the Muslim attitude (read: “contempt for”) Swedish women that needs to change.

A mosque in every city or county would have significant value to the Muslims of the country… it would greatly increase the sense of loyalty towards Sweden as your new homeland, despite being a Muslim.

A little blackmail here?

We demand special legislation in this matter that is the right to two days paid vacation in connection to the celebration of these holidays and that these two days cover the need to celebrate the holidays for Sunni and Shia Muslims and it proves that our religion and culture are accepted by the community.

Historically, the Jews in Christian countries hired “Sabbath goys” to fill in for them on their religious holidays. Muslims might consider doing the same: hire some “Friday kaffirs”. Muslims could learn a great deal from Jews in Sweden about surviving in a hostile environment.

To solve the integration problem requires a true adjustment of legislation to accommodate the Muslim demand…

No. It requires Muslim accommodation. Further, what do Muslims give back in return for the satisfaction of these demands?

Despite the fact that Islam has existed for 32 years as an organised religion in Sweden, the construction of burial grounds has been constantly hampered. Other than in the forest church yard in Stockholm there are Muslim burial grounds in 20 something countries, but that is not enough. Today there are Muslims in nearly 100 counties that lack burial grounds. The biggest general problem that Muslims encounter is that their dead are to be buried as quickly as possible, according to Islamic custom, and by a Muslim burial in their home county.

What Mr. Aldebe fails to mention is the Islamic notion of waqf. Essentially, waqf means that any real estate in which Muslims have ever been buried becomes Islamic property in perpetuity. Ask the Indians about the Taj Mahal. It’s interesting how many of these demands don’t tell the full story. They can often be defined by what they leave out.

Starting Imam education in Swedish universities and colleges is a demand from the nations Muslims and from Swedish authorities. The education can be created as part theology education, part Native Language (Arabic) education. Students can get permission to function as language and theology [religion] teachers. This education can create a natural integration of Islam in Swedish schools, and reduce the demand for private schools.

What gives Muslims the right to demand private schools? Like other sectarian groups, why don’t they build their own educational system? And why should government-run universities have to support theological education of any kind?

That the Swedish legal system is democratic and non-discriminating must in practise mean that the system should protect all people and ethnicities in the country, but this isn’t always enough as the Muslims see it. People who belong to minority groups can require special rights to be able to exist on an equal footing with the majority. The biggest problem that Muslims face is the opinions of the majority. The community is responsible [or guilty] for trying to assimilate the immigrants of the nation.

Wrong again. Inside out and backwards. Immigrants are responsible for their own assimilation. This means learn the language, learn the history, and learn the culture of your hosts. Islam badly needs to evolve a less narcissistic way of being.

Fjordman has often said that Sweden has the most advanced case of multicultural rot, and could be the first to collapse in the face of the Muslim onslaught. It seems that the Swedes may be awakening at last to the danger they face.

Ironically, some of the most commonsensical observations come from a Muslim. According to the Jerusalem Post, Haqq Kielan, head of the Swedish Islamic Society…

…called the proposals “absurd,” adding that they would lead to “a sort of Mullah-rule that people are scared of.”

“If you open the gate for separate laws for different minorities, where will it end?” he said. “We have to have one law for all citizens. That is so obvious that I don’t understand how he can come up with such an idea.”

Ugly surprise: The Watcher notified me that I hadn’t posted April 14th’s winners. Goldarn it. That means The Long List: everyone who got at least one and two-thirds votes gets a mention. So no long excerpts this time; I don’t want your eyes to glaze over.

“I don’t pretend to be an expert on Islam, but it appears to me that much of Muslim culture (particularly in the Middle East) has evolved into a structure for the sole purpose of containing female sexuality.”

The Glittering Eye was second with The Death of 1,000 Cuts. I strongly recommend that you click on this post and read the last paragraph. Print it out, even, and post it where you can remind yourself of what you should be doing.

Publishing rational criticism of Islam, reaching hundreds of thousands of people and potentially hundreds of millions of people across the world, has never been done before until a few years ago. This is also part of the inspiration for my own suggestion of creating an Online Infidel Library, with dozens of books critical of Islam being made available online.

Although I’m weak in anthropology, I did get an ‘A’ in biology years ago, and what I learned has given me insight into these strange organisms we call Middle Eastern Muslims. Every organism alive on the planet is good at something. Each has some sort of defense or capability or behavior that gave them an edge over other organisms of past eras and allowed them to evolve to overcome life’s challenges and survive to this day.

But Muslims, like the stick bug and the chameleon and the stone fish, have developed, to an amazing extent, the ability to deceive. And it is that ability that confounds their environmental competitors (you and me) the most.

These types of organisms -- “lie-in-wait” predators -- must know the full range of behaviors of the organisms they wish to defeat, so as to position themselves correctly for the strike. They are not necessarily strong or powerful, so they must know what frightens, arouses, lures, relaxes, and weakens that which they intend to destroy. For the Muslim, the idea is to exploit our greatest vulnerability -- PC thinking.

The Autonomist points out that our narrow Politically Correct and Wildly Wrong (my term, not his) Thinking has left our jugular vein open for a good bite in any interaction we happen to have with Middle East Muslims. He draws on his own maddening experience as a contractor in Iraq for examples of daily taqiyya. Not only do they do it to us, they lie and lie and lie to one another. It’s simply part of the air they breathe:

They hone these deceptive traits by practicing on themselves, first and foremost, by perfecting the art that most Westerners would call “lying.” But to them it’s not really lying. To them, lying is simply the most effective means at their disposal for saving face, being clever, getting ahead, and trying to appear superior. Remember, deception is the Muslim’s most developed trait; their secret weapon. Its constant exercise is not a matter of shame, it’s a matter of pride.

And they absolutely drool at the sight of an unsuspecting Westerner who waltzes into their midst, like the juicy beetle oblivious to the chameleon, with his Christian-based ideas of “Truth” and “honesty” and “ethics” and “integrity.” From Alexander the Great to the 101st Airborne, the first thing the Arabs saw was not our frightening array of weapons, but the big “Tootsie Pop” signs stenciled on our foreheads.

That doesn’t excuse them in my book. Cultural relativity be damned. Chronic, imbedded dishonesty is not only wrong, it is destructive, and it results in chaos. Moral chaos, political chaos, and cultural sinks. As he points out, regarding agreements (and never mind covenants. That would be an order of magnitude beyond the comprehension of the people he deals with:

…in the Middle East, there is no such thing as an Agreement. Whether a verbal commitment or a look straight in the eye or firm handshake or even a written contract, these things here are worth next to nothing. Rather than organizing or finalizing anything, these acts merely serve as a continuation of the struggle by one party to screw the other party more than they plan on getting screwed themselves. Accomplishing a given task, taking pride in one’s work, achieving competence, and even basic concepts of economic gain through mutual trade, take a far back seat to the massive satisfaction gained by getting something more out of someone else then they get from you.

After pointing out his own experiences with the lying, lying, lying Iraqis and Kuwatis, the Autonomist asks why we’d ever believe that “diplomacy” works in this region, why we would be brain-dead enough (my term) to want to negotiate with these predators. Then he gives us a quiz to consider:

Let’s take a quiz:

Q: Why are there no democracies in the Muslim Middle East?

A: Democracies are based on the possibility of mutually held Agreements between people. Democracy is unsustainable in cultures where lying is acceptable and constant.

Q: Why is every Muslim Middle Eastern country characterized by either rigid oppression or chaotic violence?

A: The coercive use of violence is the only way to ensure Muslims in the Middle East will live up to any obligations, including basic social order and function. Middle East countries where chaos currently reigns, like Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, are merely examples of what Muslims are like without coercion.

Q: How is it that intelligence gathering by Western powers, whether it is about the weapons capabilities of an entire nation, or the simple location of a lone thug, is so constantly stymied and duped in the Middle East?

A: The job of intelligence gatherers is to determine the truth. I wouldn’t take that job in the Middle East for all the money in Michael Moore’s Halliburton stocks.

Q: Have you ever seen anything that says “Made in Saudi Arabia”? What was the last thing invented or produced by Middle Eastern Muslims that helped advance humankind? Why are they so incompetent at virtually everything?

A: Although some individuals with quality talents certainly exist here, it would be impossible to gather enough in one place to Agree to cooperate in any sort of complex or significant effort. The only time Muslims can stick together long enough to produce anything en masse, like nuclear missiles for Uncle Mah, is under the threat of force.

Q: Why is it that Muslim leaders can stare the world in the eye and lie through their teeth without even flinching?

A: They’re not lying, they are “negotiating” with people they assume to be complete suckers.

Q: Are they right?

A: Good question

Finished the quiz? Still got that Tootsie pop on your forehead? Anyone that does will make a nice lunch for some Muslim.

It’s been known for some time that Jews in Sweden are at risk, but the situation is deteriorating.

Currently, Jewish congregations spend twenty-five percent of their budget on security because the police do not act. The synagogue in Stockholm has been told to remove its protective concrete barriers.

Anti-Semitic essays or public remarks are permitted because of the “conflict” with Palestine. However, the opposite does not hold true: speaking out against terrorists is a hate crime.

Swedish Ambassador to Israel, Robert Rydberg, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Thursday to explain his government’s decision to give visas to Hamas members to enter Sweden.

Director-General of the Foreign Ministry Ron Prossor said that Stockholm’s decision effectively legitimizes terrorism, and that one cannot make the distinction between a terrorist organization and its members, Israel Radio reported.

The Local, “Sweden’s newspaper in English,” published reports of growing anti-Semitism in the country:

The results, which appeared in Dagens Nyheter, showed that 26% believe that there is a ‘Jewish influence’ over the world’s economy, and 15% consider that influence to be ‘too great’. It also emerged that 14% believe that Jews use the Holocaust for political or economic ends.

One out of four of those questioned said they were negative towards the idea of a Jewish prime minister.

“What has long been a problem is the fact that anti-Semitism has in many ways been denied or trivialised, or that the problem has been seen as peculiar to marginal right wing groups,” said historian Henrik Bachner…

This isn’t new. For a while now, Jews have been hiding their identity to avoid being attacked in public. In 2004, The Stockholm Spectator blog, Stambord, (run by three Irishmen — what is that about?) noted that a few Swedish Jews had joined the IDF in Israel, feeling they were safer there than in Sweden.

As you can see from the previous post, Sweden’s Muslims grow more aggressive by the day. However, what we are less aware of – what has been kept under wraps for the last sixty years – is Sweden’s history of overt anti-Jewish laws:

For ten years up until the end of the Second World War, Swedish priests applied Nazi race rules to marriage.

Swedes who wanted to marry Germans were forced to prove that they were not Jewish. And ‘racially impure’ marriages could be annulled by Swedish courts, according to evidence presented by the Swedish Research Council on Tuesday.

Since 2001, two research programmes have explored various aspects of “Swedish fear, horror and fascination, but also kinship within Swedish science, culture and church life with Nazism and Nazi Germany”.

[…]

Any Swede who wanted to marry an Arian German was forced to sign an affirmation stating that none of the German’s grandparents were Jewish.

According to Lund University’s Professor Anders Jarlert, who led the research, Sweden’s application of these laws lacked historical and democratic legitimacy. It was also alien to the Swedish sense of justice, said Jarlert.

The evidence uncovered by Professor Jarlert shows that Sweden was not merely paying lip service to its powerful neighbour. The Swedish courts were complicit too, annulling a number of marriages and declaring the children born within them as illegitimate.

Stig Ekman, a professor of history with a special interest in Nazism, told DN that Sweden’s culture of secrecy is one reason why the details of the priests’ and courts’ lack of resistance to Nazi influence is only emerging now, 60 years later.

As this study proves, the anti-Semitism in Sweden was well in place before any Muslim set foot there.

I think you are right about the Jews getting out of Europe. I hate it, but I think it’s time for them to go. I’d love to see the US have an official open immigration policy for any Jew of European extraction.

We would do well to start with Sweden, though France is surely as dangerous.

The letter below was published on Swedish TV evening April 27th, but not mentioned on public service radio till April 28th at 8:30am.

Please help — all you eminent anti-jihadists — publicity is needed!

This is his translation of the cover letter for Muslim demands:

Open letter to Swedish political parties participating in this year’s election

Hi,

If we are going to persuade Swedish Muslims to participate in the election in September 2006, we should accept the following claims and wishes — see below — from different muslim minorities in Sweden.

I have not seen manifest and evident signals from all parties that we should comply with such wishes. We ask that the most important claims become part of the political agenda; otherwise the risk is apparent that the majority of the Muslims on election day will remain ‘on the sofa’.

We Muslims are fed up with broken election promises and we wish for tangible proposals that show that Swedes care for us. It won’t be bad if our politically chosen or any new representatives take an hour to read our open letter that has been sent to all the established political parties.

I have seen some aggressive writings by Muslims in Europe before, but this ranks among the worst I have ever read, anywhere. I don’t have time to translate everything, it is a list running over several pages with aggressive demands for just about everything.

They are DEMANDING separate family laws for Muslims, regulating marriage, divorce etc.

They are DEMANDING that public schools should employ imams to teach homogeneous classes of Muslims children in their religion and the language of their original homeland. (The city of Malmö already has pre-school classes where all teaching is conducted in Arabic. It’s “good for integration.”)

They are DEMANDING a “mosque in every municipality.” The mosques should be built through interest-free loans made available by the local municipalities. This to demonstrate “Islam’s right to exist in Sweden” and to “heighten the status of and respect towards Muslims.”

They are also DEMANDING separation between boys and girls in gymnastics and swimming education in schools.

They are DEMANDING new laws instating Islamic holidays as public holidays for Muslims. Swedes should also ensure that all Muslims get two hours off from work during the congregational Friday prayer every week.

They are DEMANDING that the Swedish church, in cooperation with the local municipalities, makes available an Islamic burial ground in every minucipality in the country where there are Muslims.

They are DEMANDING that Swedish authorities and Swedish media take stronger steps to combat Islamophobia in the public and in the Swedish system of education.

Readers who can translate more of the Swedish documents are welcome to do and send us the result.

UPDATE: Commenter defender has left some remarks that deserve to be quoted in full:

Eclipsed by the now almost common place horrors of the Religion of Peace, this article also provides some interesting insight into the upside down moral calculus of the progressive mind of Europe:

1.

They were not convicted of robbery because the only reason they took her cell phone was to prevent her for calling for help! I suppose the robbery charge would have stuck had it been determined that they stole the phone for their own personal use e.g. perhaps to call out for pizza. Also note that the focus is on the supposed intent of the bastards, not in the actions that they chose to carry out.

2.

Then, in the last paragraph, it appears that the boyfriend was given extra slack because... well... his family also wanted the unborn child to not exist.

Remember, there are justices sitting on the US Supreme Court that think European law should be the model for US judicial decisions.

Pregnant girl kicked in the stomach: Detention for youths

Judge speaks of insidious and exceptional brutality

Report by Michael Mielke

The initial shocking reports had not been exaggerated. The 16 year old Hassan El-Ch. and the one year younger Oktan P. * (names changed) had indeed tried to kick a fetus out of the stomach of a 15 year old girl on December 3, last year. Both received a comparatively high youth sentence in a criminal case held before the Berlin regional court, from which the public was excluded. Hassan El-Ch., who comes from a Lebanese family, was sentenced to three years and six months; Oktan P., of Turkish origins, received three years.

The verdict is not yet binding and the convicted have one week to appeal. The youths will remain in detention. The 16 year old El-Ch. showed no regret and flew into a fit of rage in the court room when the verdict was read.

According to the report by the chairman of the youth chamber, Bernd Miczajka, the two accused had lured their victim under a pretext to the yard of the Hedwig Dohm school in Moabit district on December 3. The German, Angelina R., was the girlfriend of Hassan El-Ch. and six months pregnant. What followed then seems incomprehensible: the unsuspecting girl was suddenly thrown to the ground. Both of the accused struck and kicked their victim, particularly in the stomach and on her back, in order to kill the unborn baby. At several points they repeatedly asked Angelina R. whether the child was already dead. When she answered negatively, she was further abused and finally forced to climb a three meter high scaffold and jump down from there. Afraid for her life, the girl obeyed their orders, jumped, and injured herself on her chin and lips.

Following this, El-Ch. and Oktan P. released the schoolgirl, convinced that the unborn baby had now actually died.

Judge Miczajka spoke of an insidious, and extremely brutal methodology.

The juvenile court considered the fact that that the two young people inquired again about the death of the unborn baby while abusing their victim as particularly despicable.

Angelina R. initially remained lying in the schoolyard, but was then able to drag herself into the nearby gymnasium to ask for help. The unborn child was saved in the hospital by a Caesarean section. According to court reports, the mother and child are — at least physically — in good condition.

The conviction of the two juvenile offenders followed a jointly committed abortion attempt and grievous bodily injury. A further accusation by the public prosecutor’s office – a case of robbery – was not upheld by the court. The accused had taken a mobile phone from the girl, according to Judges Miczajka, but this probably did not occur in order to keep it, but to prevent Angelina R. from getting help quickly.

A conviction because of attempted homicide or attempted murder is not legally possible, the judge explained, since this crime does not apply to unborn life.

The youth court considered in mitigation the confessions of the two accused who had no previous record. In addition, Hassan El-Ch. was in an exceptional situation since he was under considerable pressure from his family because of the pregnancy of his girlfriend.

The 17th Carnival of Homeschooling is up, hosted by The Common Room. I went over and took a brief look around, and chose three entries at random (OK, I admit it: I went to Math and History first because those are my favorites).

The key is a BALANCE. Truth is somewhere in the middle. Kids absolutely need to learn their addition facts and memorize their multiplication facts. Otherwise, they're going to go about learning math without a FOUNDATION.

But, I feel it is very important to teach them also WHY the rules and procedures work.

So, I made up my own paradigm. Because I like where the TPI [Teaching Perspectives Inventory] begins, I too started with reflecting on basic beliefs. I started with a basic philosophy of government, or who is sovereign, and looked at how that naturally would affect the role of the learner and the teacher. I then looked at the goals of education which would naturally be held by that belief system. Finally, I looked at the actions, or methodology, which would most naturally lead to the stated goals. Here is my summary…

You’ll have to go over to Principled Discovery to see the summary, because it’s a large graphic and can’t be shown here.

We've found a fun way to incorporate history, reading comprehension, narration/composition skills, handwriting/keyboarding and art. Making a Book of Centuries is not an original idea. But I thought if I detailed how simple this project can be, other homeschool families may enjoy starting their own Book of Centuries.

Each week my kids make a story page about a person, place or event studied in history. Filed chronologically in a very large 3-ring binder, they can literally turn the pages of time!

There’s a lot more available at the 17th Carnival of Homeschooling. Homeschoolers (and wannabe homeschoolers) are advised to go over and look at all the entries.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Back in my misspent youth, when I was a dissolute hippie living in a group house in the D.C. area, one of my housemates was a young man who joined our group after being pressured to move out of his parents’ house. On his 21st birthday, Duncan’s father gave him a suitcase and a clock. The message? “It’s Time to Go.” So Duncan went, and ended up with us.

The United Nations is over 21. In fact, it’s getting quite long in the tooth. But here it is, sporting a three-day beard, still sleeping in its old childhood bed, the one with the spaceships on the bedspread and a cowboy holster hanging on the post, its oversize feet sticking out past the end of the mattress. It’s costing the parents a fortune to feed and clothe it, but the UN just won’t leave.

For someone who loathes the UN as much as I do, John Bolton is the best ambassador that could be hoped for. But the problem is that we have to have an ambassador in the first place. The problem is that we have to have that monstrous toad squatting on the premises at Turtle Bay, eating us out of house and home.

The UN started out as a Noble Ideal, and passed through various stages such as Harmless Sideshow, Amusing Diversion, and Irritating Obstruction. It has now entered its terminal phase as an Active Evil.

It’s not just that it lets Libya or Cuba sit on its Human Rights Commission, or that the General Assembly has passed 4,770,238 resolutions condemning Israel. It’s not just that it acted as a money-launderer and corrupt fixer for Saddam’s regime. And it’s not even the fact that it sits idly by while various murderous regimes commit genocide in Rwanda and Darfur and East Timor.

The main problem is that it is going to act as a deliberate impediment to the most important task of our time: compelling Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons. The current administration, egged on by the Europeans (and especially the British), has decided that the UN is the only way to handle Iran.

But anyone with more than three brain cells can see that the UN is not going to do anything to stop Iran. France, Russia, and China will see to that; their perceived interests compel them to obstruct any real Security Council action against Iran.

And our interests, the interests of the United States of America, absolutely demand that the Iranians be defanged. If we are serious at all about what we intend, we have no business dealing with the UN.

“Please tell me if you think the United Nations is having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world.”

Respondents in the United States answered as follows:

Mainly positive

52

Mainly negative

36

Depends

3

Neither, no difference

4

DK/NA

5

Interestingly enough, Americans have a higher opinion of the UN than people in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Argentina, to name a few. Is this a function of the effective PR machine operated by the UN and its NGOs in this country?

Whatever the reason, the President and members of Congress face real political risks if they attempt to get us out of the UN. So, instead, they diddle around at the edges here and there, demanding “reform”, reshuffling the organizational deck chairs, withholding a little bit of cash now and then, insisting on minute changes of wording in appalling resolutions, etc., etc. In essence, nothing ever changes.

Since the media and the chattering classes are firmly – if delusionally – convinced of the value of the UN, in order to effect change our leaders would have to take a different tack.

The President could soften up the electorate by publicly criticizing specific actions of the UN and the officials who implement them. The White House could issue press releases describing in detail the systemic corruption of the UN. The President could direct that significant portions of our dues be withheld. From time to time, when the issue is an important one, the President could remind the American people that the pronouncements of the UN do not trump the sovereignty of the United States, nor can they contravene our Constitution. He could then order the agencies under his control not to follow specific directives of the UN that fit these conditions.

All of these actions would have the effect of lowering Americans’ opinion of the UN, and make it easier to withdraw from it when the time is ripe.

But time is short, and all of this would take leadership, real, courageous leadership from our Chief Executive. So far, such leadership has been lacking.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So what would replace the UN if the United States were to give it the old heave-ho?

Some people suggest the formation of a “League of Democracies”, but I am dubious. Such a League would almost certainly have to include Russia (which, after all, holds “elections”), and definitely would include France. We’d be back in the same old position, trying to do back-door deals with countries whose interests simply run counter to ours. Even democracies can have mutually exclusive interests.

I don’t see the necessity for some over-arching international body whose decisions are binding on its members; such organizations are pipe-dreams, the leftovers of the gooey socialist Left that have plagued us since the Treaty of Versailles.

The time-honored technique of forming ad-hoc, mutable, and occasionally shifting alliances should serve us well. In practice, one such alliance will consist of what is becoming known as the Anglosphere: the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking states, as well as Japan, and now India (Yay India!). The interests of these countries will often align with ours, so agreement on common policy and actions will be relatively easy.

But none of the arrangements would be binding or permanent – Britain, in particular, with its advanced case of sclerotic Socialism, will not always be willing to yoke its wagon to the same ox as ours.

In fact, sometimes it seems as if it’s just the Yanks and the Aussies, standing back-to-back and reloading while painted savages swarm over the palisade on all sides. But if that’s the way it has to be, we are tough enough to handle it.

The alternative is to have corrupt and malign dictatorships under the protective mantle of the United Nations oversee our own destruction.

Millennia from now, after the Second Dark Age has ended, when civilization has finally regenerated itself out of seeds carefully nurtured in Singapore or Botswana, archaeologists will regard our own time the same way we look at the fallen aqueducts and uncovered mosaic floors of the Romans. They will burrow into sealed vaults of our CD-ROMs, excavate the interchanges of Interstate 95, and go scuba-diving among the stumps of monuments in the muck at the bottom of the Potomac Bay, and then they will say to each other, “Look what they once were, and look what they came to be! How could they have let that happen?”

We who stand on the badly damaged ramparts of Western Civilization are the only ones who can answer that question.

The United Nations confirmed yesterday the U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating suspected wrongdoing in the office that handles procurement for U.N. peacekeeping operations.

In a further blow to the troubled peacekeeping department, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to be delivered to Congress today describes the procurement office as understaffed, poorly trained and badly lacking the oversight that would uncover corruption, fraud and waste.

Eight senior staff members were suspended with pay earlier this year, after an inquiry by the U.N. inspector general’s office uncovered lax management and possible corruption.

Now how much will it cost the U.S. taxpayer this time for an investigation whose results we could have recited in unison?

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

This post has been sitting in various places, half-written, for several weeks now. Parts of it are on my laptop; parts have been printed out and left in pieces on the coffee table. A few notes flutter out of my journal where I stuck them several weeks ago.

It would seem I’d rather not finish the post, and, at least on one level, that’s true. But another part of me aches for the remembrance then and the sense of helplessness now, as history repeats itself.

So push has come to shove: April 25th is the day set aside annually for the commemoration of the Holocaust. It is the day to remember those millions of souls who vanished into silence during the Second World War. Today the post gets written, or it gets consigned to oblivion.

This is a personal story. It is not the tale of a Holocaust survivor, but a recollection of shame about my family — a feeling that is fading as I observe myself in the same position my mother occupied when it was her turn to watch what the Western world does to Jews.

I was raised a devout Roman Catholic. My mother was born and lived in Ireland until her marriage to my father — a union which happened to coincide with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Having been swept off her feet by this handsome American, what relevance could a Blitzkrieg possibly have to my mother’s life?

As it transpired, very little. My mother was an intelligent woman, but she was not an intellectual. She read devotional books, or an occasional novel. The larger world held little interest for her, and, until she became an American citizen fifteen years after her arrival here, I never even heard her discuss politics. Apolitical people like my mother are not unusual; even so, looking back at the history through which she lived, I find it hard to comprehend how little it meant to her. On the other hand, being an alien resident with a green card, always feeling that at any moment she could be sent back, Mother did not live at the forefront of her life. Only after friends pushed her through the process of applying for citizenship, only after taking the oath and being able to check the box “U.S. Citizen” on forms — only then did she relax enough to look at the headlines. Now she belonged; now she could vote. Her very first presidential election was Adlai Stevenson and Eisenhower. The image of my mother wobbling off on my bike to vote for the first time remains distinct.

My exposure to history as a child was mostly the 1950s version of the patriotic American story. The threat of Communism was very real to Catholic schoolchildren in those days. We knew about the imprisonment of Cardinal József Mindszenty, and prayed for him. The burgeoning parochial school system was dedicated to producing assimilated American Catholic children — very definitely, Red-White-and-Blue Catholics is what we were.

If history classes touched on the Holocaust, I do not remember it. What I do recall, as freshly as if it happened last month, was my introduction to the images of the concentration camps. The program, narrated by Edward R. Murrow, riveted me to the television screen.

This was my first brush with Evil, up close and unrelenting. By the time the program was over, I was (I now know) in a state of shock. I had just been traumatized by the enormity of our human capacity for malevolence. My innocence was a dead, useless skin, quickly molted and left behind. I remember being angry as only idealistic adolescents can be. When my mother returned — she had been at some devotional at church — I was beside myself. In fact, from then on I could understand what that phrase meant.

I confronted her at the door, tears streaming down my face. Her instant maternal alarm quickly dissolved when she learned the source of my distress.

“Oh, that thing about the concentration camps,” she said, waving it away. “I heard they were going to show that.”

I was stunned. “You mean you knew about it?”

“Oh, vaguely. Your father and I got the last boat out of Liverpool to come to America. I remember U-boats following us all the way through international waters. Down in steerage there were crowds of people. Most of them had tattoos. I knew they’d been in some prisons Hitler set up for the Jews. They were a sad lot.”

In my whole life this was the only time I ever wanted to hit my mother. How could she?

“How could you just ignore it? Why didn’t you do something?”

Mother looked at me as though as though I were speaking Greek, as though I were the alien. I hated her callous dismissal of a part of history that was up close and unspeakably inhuman.

Eventually I quit asking her questions. Later, as an adult, I realized how anxious and scared she’d been herself through those years. With the passage of enough time I even forgave her, as children do, though my whole-hearted respect never returned.

In the days following my discovery, it was hard to think of anything else. When I lay down at night, the images of those stacked bodies and the slack-jawed living skeletons would not permit me a luxury like sleep. If I slept, then I would be equally complicit with those who had permitted these atrocities.

Slowly, I became fiercely pro-Israel. I even considered converting to Judaism as a kind of reparation. Of course, I never said this out loud. I lived in a Catholic ghetto; though I never ever heard any anti-Semitic remarks, I was on an island of Catholics in a sea of Southern Baptists. Jews — as evidenced by Israel — were admirable but exotic.

As I matured and witnessed and cheered Israel’s survival, I learned more about the rich history of Jews in America. I read with a shiver of pride George Washington’s Letter to the Jewish congregation in Rhode Island. Heartened by Israel’s “Never Again”, I knew with certainty that “Never in America” was an absolute. I read Jewish biographies like Harry Golden’s For Two Cents Plain, books about urban Jewish childhoods. I envied the survival instincts of these, my religious forebears.

As Palestine became the darling of the Left, I moved right. Up until now, I’d always seen my conservative philosophy as arising from my economic principles, and that is certainly true. But, above all, it was my solidarity with Israel which slowly evolved into a militant stand against those of my fellow citizens who seemed to hate America and Israel equally. When I would occasionally (and then more frequently) meet a pro-Palestinian Jew, the cognitive dissonance made me queasy. Their outlook, to me, was either insane or perverted. I still think this.

Life comes full circle in more ways than one can imagine in adolescence. Reading Shrinkwrapped’s description of the increasingly desperate straits of Stockholm’s Jews, I am now in same helpless position my mother once occupied. The fact that I am more informed than she was does not render me more competent to do anything. The fact that I know she and I were and are part of a larger historical wave of Western self-destruction does not provide surcease.

The most bizarre and perverted aspect of this phenomenon of self-hatred is the denial of the Holocaust itself. This symptom of our cultural depravity, even if it exists only on the fringes, is deeply disturbing for what it portends for the future of the West. If we are denied our remembrance of the past — and 9/11 is now entering this “VERBOTEN” zone — then what are we?

What are we, with no history?

My intent is to continue, by whatever means I have, to wrest from the culture-killers and the memory-hole guardians, the haters and the equivocators, their prominence of place in the American landscape.

Some fans of the Watermelon want to make August 3rd the unofficial celebration of National Watermelon Day, but to me Watermelon Day is the perfect nickname for Earth Day, because so many of its most ardent supporters are really just Marxists wrapped up in eco-friendly clothing... they’re Red on the inside and Green on the outside. And the so-called environmentalist movement is really just a conduit for their anti-Capitalist and anti-American propaganda. Ask anyone who scoffs at this notion why it is that Lenin’s birthday was chosen as the official day to celebrate Earth Day, eh?

Earth Day is Lenin’s birthday?? It’s the birthday of the Baron’s Boy also. How will I break the news?

But please, let us not ruin a perfectly good fruit on a group of nut cakes.

Last Friday I posted an email from a Scandinavian reader about the closing of a school in Malmö due to excessive violence among the school’s students, who are predominantly Muslim immigrants. At the time, there were no English-language news sources for this story.

Now, thanks to a tip from Roncesvalles, I can post an excerpt from The Local, an English-language Swedish news organ:

Plans to shut down the senior part of Hermodsdal school in Malmö have prompted the Liberals to request an extra parliamentary debate on the problem of discipline in Swedish schools.

“In Malmö a gang of troublemakers has dictated the decision. It’s unacceptable,” said the Liberal Party’s Jan Björklund.

The proposal to close the high school with 200 students, which was put forward during the Easter break, was due to “lack of security, vandalism and poor study results”. The school has been vandalised several times and in January part of it was damaged in an arson attack.

[…]

“It’s the first time a school in Sweden has been closed because it is too rowdy,” said Jan Björklund, who sees the decision as giving in to discipline problems. He described it as collective punishment, which has affected the innocent.

If you read through the whole article, you might notice something. In fact, if you’re a regular reader of Gates of Vienna (and Fjordman), it will stick out like a sore thumb: the words “immigrant”, “Muslim”, and “Islamic” are not mentioned. The Local contrives to tell the whole story without mentioning the most significant element of it: violence perpetrated by predominantly Muslim immigrant children forced the closure of a Swedish school.

Somehow – nobody knows quite how – the staid, phlegmatic, law-abiding Swedes have become “rowdy”. There’s no real explanation; it just kind of happened. One day Swedish citizens woke up, and their children were violent. A school had to close. There’s nothing to be done about it; these things happen.

In Sweden there are apparently two I-words which must not be spoken or printed. The lesser I-word is “immigrant”, and the greater I-word is “Islamic”.

Monday, April 24, 2006

UPDATE: Here’s new information about the actual identity of the two murderers of Joe Van Holsbeeck. They turn out to be Polish immigrants, not North Africans.

The Brussels Journal reports on the anonymous email it received from someone at the Justice Department:

Haha, there you are with your pants down! First you spend a whole week writing that the murderers are North Africans, and now they turn out to be Polish… Isn’t that the country of the previous Pope, beloved by Belien, an arch-Catholic with his own version of the Sacrifice…

How low can [one sink]…

As the Journal points out, the whole country, including its immigrants and including the police, believed this to be the work of North Africans. Now why would that be? Is there some correlation between the crime rate and that particular group?

Belien points out that The Brussels Journal waited a week before writing about the identity of the murderers. They were drawn into the argument after Belgium’s Catholic cardinal and the government started blaming the victim for his own murder.

Well, Mr. Belien, do the American thing: while you have your pants down, why don’t you just moon the email writer before you get back to work?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Want to know who called for the silent march in Brussels to commemorate the life of the young man killed by North African immigrants last week?

First, the march itself: Eighty thousand people walked in a silent memorial for 17 year-old victim Joe Van Holsbeeck, who was stabbed repeatedly through the heart at a train station because he refused to give up his MP3 player. Somehow, I think he would have been killed whether or not he surrendered. This is not about possessions, it is about irredeemable hatred.

But here’s the interesting part, and probably the only reason the march could have taken place without the fiercely politically correct establishment coming down on the leaders with heavy fines and penalties for being “racist.” They couldn't do that this time, though, because the organizer of the event was himself a North African:

…the initiative for the march came from Fouad Ahidar, a Moroccan-born Flemish member of the Brussels regional parliament, who said last week that many immigrants are equally worried about violent Moroccan youth gangs.

Ahidar, a father of five, already called for a protest march on 15 April, saying that if the victims had been immigrants and not Belgians, “or even if an immigrant just gets a few kicks from police officers, half of Brussels would be on the streets in solidarity with the victim.” According to the Moroccan-born MP, anti-Belgian racism is rife among Muslim street gangs. “This murder stinks of racism,” he said. “There is a growing group of criminal Moroccan and Turkish youths who go after victims who look like infidels. We have to fight racism in all its varieties, whether by the immigrants or the native community.” What Ahidar says is common knowledge but only he may say so. If a native Belgian makes such comments he or she risks being taken to court for racism by the authorities’ racism watchdog CEOOR, an instrument used by the government parties to silence political opponents.

In response to Ahidar’s appeal many immigrant organisations had called on their members to participate in the protest.

This report, from The Brussels Journal, noted that the BBC initially omitted any mention of the ethnicity of the murderers, a fact which is central to the story. “Central,” that is, unless you’re the BBC. Or NPR. Or The New York Times. News with a filter, from your local brainstem media.

Thorbjørn Jagland is a former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Norway from the Labor Party. He is now President of the Storting, the Norwegian Parliament, and thus technically speaking the highest ranking person in the country, next to the King. He recently wrote an essay to Aftenposten newspaper entitled Islamofobi vårt nye spøkelse? (Islamophobia our new ghost/specter?) where he warned against the dangers of Islamophobia. According to Jagland, seemingly paraphrasing the Communist Manifesto, a specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Islamophobia. Between the lines, Jagland seems to hint that the situation in Europe is now similar to that of the 1930s: We are very close to a new world war and the downfall of European democracy, a conclusion I wholeheartedly support. This is also where our agreement ends. According to Mr. Jagland, “far too few people during the interwar period understood what a fateful time they were living in. While those who wanted peace were arguing, Fascism grew stronger. In the point of intersection between the Islamists and Islamophobia, a new type of Fascism could emerge.”

Jagland praises the way the Labor-led Norwegian government handled the crisis after a tiny Christian newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the now famous twelve cartoons of Muhammad from Jyllands-Posten in Denmark. According to Bruce Bawer on his blog, “Velbjørn Selbekk, the editor of Magazinet, had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists (who made death threats) and by the Norwegian establishment. But then Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo. There Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition on behalf of 46 Muslim organizations and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council. In attendance were members of the Norwegian cabinet and the largest assemblage of imams in Norway’s history.” Although Jagland thinks we ended the cartoon controversy in a good way, he fears that there is still a lot of quiet Islamophobia in the general public because of “the perverted version of Islam promoted by the extremists.” The right-wing Progress Party, already the second largest in Norway, has been growing in the wake of the cartoons affair, and now seems to be in the process of replacing Jagland’s Labor Party as the largest party in the country, for the first time in 80 years.

Thorbjørn Jagland recommends time-tested Eurabian methods to combat “the rising racism.” He earlier lauded the EU’s decision to begin negotiations with Turkey as “just as important to Europe as the fall of the Berlin Wall,” of course without saying a word about the fact that this was strongly against the wishes of a majority of the people in nearly all EU countries. In particular, Jagland wants Norwegians to learn from the example of our neighbors in Sweden, which is not as “xenophobic” as our other Scandinavian neighbor, Denmark. Is Jagland being serious? Sweden is probably the worst country in the Western world in dealing with these issues. Sweden has a 25% real unemployment rate. What happens if or when the Swedish welfare state collapses? Isn’t it likely that this will trigger a flood of “welfare tourists” to neighboring countries such as Norway? This question hasn’t even been asked, much less debated, by a single political leader in this country. The number of rape charges in Sweden has quadrupled in a generation, parallel to Muslim immigration. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists in one court were born on foreign soil or of foreign parents. In a new Sociological survey, the wave of robberies the city of Malmö has witnessed during this past year is part of a “war against Swedes.” This is the explanation given by young robbers with immigrant background. “When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” This argument was repeated several times. “Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.” The boys explain, laughingly, that “there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you’re robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you’ve succeeded, it simply feels good.” “It’s so easy to rob Swedes, so easy.” “We rob every single day, as much as we want to, whenever we want to.” A high school teacher in Malmö discovered that about a dozen Arab students were laughing and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” while watching a DVD of infidel hostages being beheaded in Iraq. The headmaster didn’t think the incident was such a big deal. At least 139 schools in Sweden suffered arson attacks during 2002 alone. Björn Vinberg from the fire department in Kroksbäck in the Malmö area says it’s humiliating and degrading to put out fires again and again in the same immigrant areas, with school kids laughing at them and lighting a new one just afterwards. His colleagues have been to the same place no less than twenty times, all totally unnecessary. One of the schools in Malmö recently closed down an entire section because of rampant violence, something unheard of in Sweden only a generation ago.

Sweden is a semi-totalitarian country. It’s all about façade. On the surface, Sweden is a tolerant nation and peaceful democracy. In reality, there is massive media censorship by a closed elite that is scared of having a debate about immigration. There are even physical attacks on critics of immigration by Leftist extremists, something which has been largely ignored and thus quietly approved by the establishment, until it now even targets parties in Parliament. No dissent is tolerated. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations in immigration. Yet not one party represented in the Swedish Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society or the current immigration policies. The Swedish elite congratulate themselves that they have managed to keep “xenophobic” parties from gaining a foothold while the country is sinking underneath their feet. No, Mr. Jagland, we have nothing to learn from Sweden except hypocrisy to perfection. We should study them only in trying to avoid letting them drag us down with them when they fall, which they will.

Curiously, at almost the same time as Mr. Jagland warned against rising “Islamophobia,” an article in newspaper Aftenposten warned that “youths” are in the process of destroying Norway’s capital city, Oslo. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that these “youths” bear a striking resemblance to the same “youths” with Muslim immigrant background that are destroying so many cities across Western Europe:

Criminal youths are in the process of destroying the social environment in Oslo, concludes the Oslo City Court. Young girls are raped and robbed. Schoolchildren are threatened with death, robbed and assaulted. The Stovner-police is now uncovering another violent gang in the Grorudvalley on the outskirts of Oslo. Four boys were robbed Sunday night, February 5. Eight youths, ranging from 15 to 18 years old, were arrested, and are now charged with the robberies. All suspects are of foreign origin. One of the suspects, a Somalian who turned 17 years old last week, appeared in court and was sent to jail in order to protect society. Only four days after being apprehended he was due to stand trial in another robbery case. To avoid letting the youth loose among his peers, he was sent directly to a jail in Oslo to serve time for several robberies, a rape, and assisting another rape.

The 17 year old Somalian has several serious crimes on his conscience, but the worst is probably the rape of a young girl at Hoybraaten (Oslo suburb) one year ago. Oslo Court states that the rape was unusually brutal, and lasted for several hours. The young girl was threatened with a knife and beaten. The Somalian choked the girl so brutally and for so long, that the medical doctor who afterwards treated the girl, said that she could have died. Her voice has changed. The girl is now suffering from severe psychological problems in the aftermath of the attack. The Youth was sentenced to four and half years in prison, where three years was made conditional, which means he will serve only one and a half years. The sentence also included another rape, where his Norwegian-Moroccan friend raped a 13 year old girl, whilst the Somalian helped to threaten her and keep guard. She was also brutally treated, and is experiencing serious problems after the experience. The Court states that the girl was harassed by the family of the Norwegian-Moroccan and his friends. It went so far that the girl was angry at her own mother for giving the name of the rapists to the police. The girl wanted to pay the offenders to make them leave her alone. Her psychological condition became so bad she had to be forcibly sent to a psychological institution. Her schooling is destroyed.

Aftenposten should be commended for even printing this politically incorrect article, which is unfortunately rare in Norwegian media. The original article in Norwegian quickly got more than one hundred comments by readers. There were so many furious comments that the newspaper suddenly decided to remove them. In general, my impression is that a rapidly increasing part of the population distrusts Muslims. Only massive media censorship conceals this fact, and I suspect the same goes for much of Europe. However, Aftenposten seem to have forgotten an article they printed five years ago. In 2001, two out of three charged with rape in Norway’s capital were immigrants with a non-western background according to a police study. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases. A leading member of the Liberal Party (Venstre), Odd Einar Dørum, demanded all the numbers be put on the table: “A scumbag is a scumbag, regardless of skin color”. From 2001 to 2005, Dørum was Norway’s Minister of Justice, and nobody has seen these statistics since 2001. The number of rape charges in Oslo have continued to rise. There is ample evidence of brutal gang rapes, something that used to be rare in Scandinavia, being committed by immigrants against native girls.

Not only have the authorities done nothing to stop this trend of racist attacks against native Norwegians, they have taken steps to increase crackdowns on “racism” by the natives. In 2005 Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, passed a new Discrimination Act, prepared by then Minister of Integration, Erna Solberg, who earlier called for the establishment of a sharia council in Norway. The act says in pretty clear words that in cases of suspected direct or indirect discrimination based on religion or ethnicity, native Norwegians are guilty until proven otherwise. The immigration spokesman for the right-wing Progress Party, Per Sandberg, feared that the law would jeopardize the rights of ordinary, law-abiding Norwegian citizens. Reverse burden of proof is combined with liability to pay compensation, which means that innocent persons risk having to pay huge sums for things they did not do. FOMI, a Norwegian anti-Islamic website, was recently charged with “racism and spreading Islamophobia” for translating one of several articles by Frontpage Magazine, with comments, about a Muslim rape wave in the West.

Bruce Bawer, author of recently published book “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within,” devotes a good deal of space to European media in his writings, which is appropriate. Norwegian Prime Minister and leader of the Labor Party, Jens Stoltenberg, has stated that “journalistic diversity is too important to be left up to the marketplace.” The government is still running two out of Norway’s four national TV channels, and three of its national radio channels. NRK, the Norwegian equivalent of the BBC or Burka Broadcasting Corporation in the UK, complete with the same anti-American, anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic bias, was the only national TV channel in Norway until 1992, three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Leader of the right-wing Progress Party, Mr. Carl I. Hagen, has labelled NRK “ARK,” or “Labor Party’s Broadcasting Company,” since until the 90s, most of its leaders were former leading members of the Labor Party. In addition to this, something that would be unthinkable in the USA, Norwegian taxpayers actually subsidize commercial Norwegian newspapers. This is supposedly to ensure diversity of opinions. This system means that Norwegian taxpayers, whether they want to or not, subsidize the existence of Norwegian Communist newspaper Klassekampen (The Class Struggle), whose members in the 1970s strenuously denied any mass-murders done by Pol Pot and his comrades in Cambodia, denouncing these accusations as “capitalist lies” to slime a successful, Socialist nation. Norway’s only professor of journalism at the University level, Sigurd Allern, is a former leader of the Communist Party. He is today teaching critical thinking to aspiring journalists at the University of Oslo.

At the same time, Norway can hardly come up with a single decent conservative newspaper, the closest being business daily Dagens Næringsliv. The most rightist newspapers, such as Aftenposten or VG, could at best be described as centrist or even soft-leftist, with a few individual journalists as being centre-right. Diversity of media in Norway thus means the whole range from hard-leftist to soft-leftist, with the Norwegian equivalent of the New York Times being as far right as you get. As Bawer notes, when he first came to Norway, he was impressed by the number of newspapers the average citizen reads on a daily basis. Only later did he start to question what information they were actually presented in these newspapers.

Norwegians pride themselves in their sophisticated and informed view of the world, viewing Americans as somewhat simplistic and brainwashed by FOX News propaganda. The very word or concept of “Eurabia” has hardly been mentioned at all in Norwegian media. One prominent journalist, not a Leftist by Norwegian standard, told me that Eurabia is just another conspiracy theory, on par with The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Kari Vogt, historian of religion at the University of Oslo and widely considered and quoted as the leading expert on Islam in the country, has stated that Ibn Warraq’s book “Why I am Not a Muslim” is just as irrelevant to the study of Islam as The Protocols are to the study of Judaism. A Norwegian NGO called the Freedom of Expression Fund supports the translation and publication of bin Laden’s speeches. They also awarded the editor of Communist newspaper Klassekampen with the Freedom of Speech award for his bravery in defence of free speech. He has shown sympathies for Islamic terrorists in his columns.

For some strange reason, Bruce Bawer’s book has so far been widely ignored by Norwegian media, despite the fact that Bawer lives in Norway and that his work is being read with interests by experts and laymen on both sides of the Atlantic. Could it be that Mr. Bawer has touched upon some sensitive issues that the sophisticated Norwegian press don’t want to talk about? Michael Moore’s books criticizing the USA were translated into Norwegian and sold very well. Any chance this will happen to Bawer’s book, criticizing Europe?

Mr. Jagland worries about the possibilities of a new kind of powerful Fascist movement in Europe, and quite frankly, so do I. But there is no need for this to happen if people feel that their elected leaders uphold their interests they way they are supposed to do. However, when a government can no longer guarantee, within reason, the safety of its citizens, that government’s days are numbered and that system of government’s days may also be numbered. It took centuries of hard and ingenious work to build our civilized Western society, yet judging from current events, it may take just a few short decades for this civilization to commit collective suicide. It is amazing to see such a rapid dissolution of centuries old European countries due to immigration without assimilation. I have read Norwegian historians and “experts” who claim that there is nothing to worry about over this massive immigration, since there has always been immigration and this situation is not new.

This is a clever form of lie. At the beginning of the 21st century, the total number of people on this planet is vastly larger than ever before in the history of the human race. Combined with modern means of communication, we get the largest and fastest population transfers ever recorded, large enough to destroy nations or, in the case of Europe, perhaps even entire continents. This is “the great extinction of peoples,” and small Scandinavian nations with a few million inhabitants, a drop in the sea of humanity, will be completely crushed by these processes unless they take strong steps to limit immigration. That’s the simple truth. Yet all our so-called leaders can do is warn against “xenophobia.” Dr. Ole Jørgen Anfindsen, editor of HonestThinking.org, believes that Norwegian authorities have cheated with prognoses for the number of immigrants. According to his numbers, ethnic Norwegians will become a minority in their own country before 2050 if the current trends continue, in Oslo long before this. The number of Muslims in Norway over 15 years has quadrupled, meaning an annual growth of more than 9%.

Norway celebrated 100 years as an independent state last year. Judging from the new Discrimination Act and the runaway Muslim immigration, perhaps the anniversary should be called “From independence to colonization”. At the same time as their women are no longer safe in the streets because of immigrant gangs, the authorities respond by making Norwegians de facto second-rate citizens in their own country. They use their own people as stepping stones for their personal careers in the UN bureaucracy, lecturing about how to create the perfect society while their own citizens find it increasingly hard to live in their major cities. We have no significant colonial history ourselves and denounce all forms of colonialism, but are supposed to smile when we are colonized ourselves. We were one of the poorest countries in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and one of the richest in the world at the beginning of the 21st. We managed this transformation entirely on our own, and didn’t “plunder” anybody for it. We don’t owe anything to anyone, except perhaps the British and the Americans for preserving our freedom during WW2 and the Cold War. It is true that Norway is a special case, with its oil wealth since the 1970s, today the third largest exporter in the world after Saudi Arabia and Russia. But even wealth has to be managed. Norway is probably the only major oil exporting country on the planet that has managed to remain a stable democracy with low levels of corruption. By any standards possible, we’re one of the most successful cultures in the world, our largest flaw, which could eventually bury us, probably being our naivety. So why on earth should we quietly watch while our country is subdued by the most unsuccessful cultures in the world? The most basic instinct of all living things, even down to bacteria level, is self-preservation. In 2006, you have a natural right to self-preservation if you are an amoeba, but not if you’re a Scandinavian. Maybe the solution then is to argue that Scandinavians are indeed a species of amoebas, and that we need special protection by the WWF. We could showcase some of our finest specimen of Leftist intellectuals and journalists to prove our point. Shouldn’t be too hard.

With current trends remaining unchanged, native Norwegians will be a minority in their own capital city within a couple of decades, a situation that has never happened before since the foundation of Oslo a thousand years ago. Judging from all experience with Muslims previously, non-Muslim Norwegians will be ruthlessly persecuted, either cornered into a civil war or forced to flee from what was once their country. Newcomers move into an area and brutalize the natives who have become too soft to uphold themselves. There is nothing new about this scenario; it has been going on for thousands of years, as long as mankind has existed. It is the harsh law of nature. What is unique in this case is that the original inhabitants of this country are forced to fund their own colonization and eventual extinction by their own leaders, who portray this as an act of “tolerance.” I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened before.

Thorbjørn Jagland, sticking to true, Eurabian form, also recommends increased pressure on Israel to solve the “Palestinian issue.” Why doesn’t he talk to his old friend from the Labor Party, Mr. Terje Rød-Larsen, a key player during the Oslo process, who has publicly admitted that “Arafat lied all the time and knew he was lying.” There never was an Oslo Peace Process, only a hudna, a temporary truce with the infidels to buy time and destroy the Israelis later, just as Muhammad did in the treaty of Hudaybiyya. The only peace process we will have in Oslo in the future will be when Israel sends special envoy Binyamin Netanyahu to negotiate a division of the country between Muslims and the native Norwegians that haven’t fled to the USA. Who knows, maybe the Norwegian Nobel Committee will award him the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

This week, Olav Versto, political editor of the largest newspaper in Norway, VG, supported the decision to keep sending money to the Palestinian Hamas government. VG as a newspaper was created during the resistance to Nazi occupation during WW2. It is a sad day for this country and this continent when institutions that fought Nazi Germany end up appeasing the anti-democratic forces of our age. Darkness is descending upon Europe when Europeans are no longer safe in their own cities from harassment by Muslim immigrants, and the only thing our so-called leaders do about this is recommending a 500% increase in the number of Muslims by letting Turkey into the EU, giving more money to Islamic terrorists and working to silence “Islamophobia” by their own people.

But remember, Eurabia is a conspiracy theory only American simpletons believe, and Fjordman is just a racist, right-wing nutcase. Our state-sponsored Leftist newspapers tell us so, so it must be true.

“Their opposition to the Hamas victory proves that this is a crusade against Islam. This shows what Sheik Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Laden’s No. 2] warned about before, not to enter into an infidel’s council. The sanctions imposed by the West on the Hamas government prove more that there is a Zionist crusader war on Islam.”

Do you realize what Osama is saying here? Let me translate it from Jihad-Speak:

Anyone who won’t send payments to Hamas is in a state of war with Islam!

How’s that for chutzpah?

Or can an Arab exhibit chutzpah? Maybe there’s an Arabic word it…

It reminds me of people who say this:

The federal government won’t subsidize my latest excrement-covered statue of the Virgin Mary copulating with a stallion! That’s a violation of my First Amendment rights!

Or when a celebrity leftist (I know, I know; that’s a redundancy) goes on TV and says this:

Bill O’Reilly disagreed with me and called me a pinhead! That’s censorship!

What do all these things have in common? They assume the the United States government is the cause of all things, is responsible for all things, and violates the rights of various people or groups if it doesn’t accede to their demands.

It’s a welfare state mentality. The government owes us. If it doesn’t give us what we want, that’s a violation of our rights. In addition, it insults our honor, so we’re going to break out the molotov cocktails and start looting Starbucks. Smash the State!

Bin Laden’s version has an extra added ingredient: the Classic Shakedown. He’s got mau-mauing down to a fine art. Pay up, Infidel, or else!

It’s a nice little civilization you have here — wouldn’t want anything to happen to it…

You’ve got to hand it to the guy; he’s a master of pushing all the West’s buttons. Oppressed people. Longterm grievances. Racial and religious tolerance. And then the threat of violence, vicious ruthless violence against the soft limp-wristed pansy quaking-in-their-boots infidels, all those pathetic weaklings who lack the manly necessity to resist his demands.

He sees us all as Canadians and Swedes, ready to roll over and expose our soft underbelly at the first sign of his darkening brow.

And so it’s time to pay the next installment of the jizyah, with the Palestinians wearing the green eyeshade and writing the figures down in the Caliph’s ledger as the infidels line up at the teller’s window.